January 10, 2011

Jared Lee Loughner’s Close Friend Speaks

Jared Lee Loughner volunteering at the Tucson Book Festival. | © Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily Star/ZUMAPRESS.com.

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I landed an exclusive interview with Bryce Tierney, a close friend of Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged gunman in the massacre in Tucson Saturday that killed six people, wounded 14, and left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the reported target, fighting for her life. In the interview, Tierney talks about his relationship with Loughner, why he thinks his friend might have targeted Giffords, and what Loughner said in a previously unreported 2:00 a.m. voicemail he left for Tierney. Read: Bryce Tierney on Jared Lee Loughner.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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